So does this mean that you were anxious to start this thread? 
(I don’t have any questions.)
I have something like an anxiety disorder.
It was based in a lack of self-confidence. We moved a lot when I was a kid, so I was always “new kid on the block”.
I decided to try and beat it by doing risky things that would make me more self-reliant and confident.
I started by getting a pilot’s license and learning aerobatics. Then I got a scuba certification and made some dives in Hawaii. Then I took up skydiving and made over 100 jumps. Then I built a kit plane and flew it.
It worked to some extent. When I run into a tough situation at work, I think “Well, it’s not as scary as stepping out of an airplane door at 13,000 feet.”
It helps.
Except now I worry about getting throat cancer because I smoke 5 cigarettes a day.
It’s always going to be something.
If you’re a worrier, you’re a worrier.
I used to. I would agreed that CBT is the best way to go.
How can I help someone who has this kind of problem? Both in general terms and in the middle of an attack. I mean, I’m sure that someone saying “oh, c’mon, honey, it’s not that bad!” should be punched inna nose.
A friend has terror attacks during which one of the things that happens is that she refuses to leave the house or even her room (makes going to the bathroom complicated); common friends have mentioned telling her that she should stop smoking dope since it’s linked to triggering panic attacks, which she’s had from childhood, but she won’t listen. (I can’t provide cites about that linkage, since I directly don’t touch dope except in electronic form I’ve never worried much about it).
At that stage, professional help is generally required.
She refuses to take it. In her uncle’s words, “I love that girl to death, but she hasn’t listened to anybody since the day she was born.”
That’s how my brother is. It’s unfortunate but with that level of problem, playing therapist is difficult.
I have a few questions for those who’ve had panic attacks. (I’ve only had two in my life, and they were truly horrible. Both were related to social situations so I think I may be slightly social phobic. I seem to be getting less anxious as I’m exposed to more and more people though).
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How often do you have them?
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Are you able to exert any control over them? For instance I’ve heard that it helps to focus on your breathing and try to slow your respiration down.
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Do you notice yourself becoming desensitized to your triggers as you’re exposed to them more often? Or are they always just as panic-inducing?
I can answer for before I got on meds, which take the edge off and allow me to think more rationally and not get into the cycle of panic.
They came in clusters, triggered by uncertainty in life. They weren’t a regular thing although after I got a name for them it became more formalized and I worried about them more. Before that it was just “random bouts of fearful days” which wore off again. I got help when they just wouldn’t go away for weeks and I was physically sick from them. They were triggered by a friend leaving the job; she was the person I talked to the most and relied on. Or by not having a schedule over the summer in high school and having panic over scrupulosity (religious compulsion) stuff. Or by a partner leaving town. Anything where I was sad or afraid but couldn’t handle the emotion and just spun out.
With the meds I can process emotions and realize that they are strong but manageable, normal, won’t kill me.
Yeah, “snap out of it” is discouraged. Personally, I relied on having others around until I realized that they didn’t help keep the panic away. That’s another part of what sent me to professional help. I guess just be there to reassure them. “I know it feels horrible, but you’re safe.” Recognize what they are feeling feels true to them, but emphasize other truths as well. Panic makes you feel like you are crazy and are going to completely snap, but the truth is you probably won’t. Keep suggesting outside help.
Dingdingdingdingding! We have a winner!
As for Phantom Dennis’s questions:
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It varies. Lately I’ve been waking up with mild anxiety every morning due to a sucky car situation. Money’s another trigger. I tend to freak out mildly whenever I have bills due.
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Meditation helps. Talking to friends. Going to work. Basically I have to distract myself and follow some very good advice given to me when I had my first major panic attack: “You’re thinking about it too much.”
BTW, I had my first panic attack at 13 when I realized what “eternity” really meant.
- I find myself better able to cope with them. Some I’m still not used to. I have severe needlephobia and that didn’t go away even after eight years of blood tests and IVs. (Anyone who says “You’ll get used to it!” around me will get a firm dopeslap upside the head.) I’ve knocked nurses across the room when I’ve had needle-triggered panic attacks. The only thing that stops those is someone to distract me and the phlebotomist/nurse/what have you sneaking the implements of destruction in when my back is turned and getting it over with very quickly.
When I had them around 14, I relied on my mom and tried to talk about everything that was making me scared. It made me physically ill and after I threw up she said she wouldn’t talk to me about it anymore, I believe because she felt it was making me more het up. But yeah, that did force me to not keep obsessing out loud, and when it was time to go back to school and get back into a routine I was much better.
“Eternity”–yeah, I had a freakout recently when I finally realized one day I will be dead and what will that be like??? A friend mentions how one time he went out into the star-filled night and actually couldn’t bear to look up at the sky because the huge eternityness of it scared him so much.
This is what CBT teaches, also.
Oh, sorry, Nava, I meant to address your question, too. Short, unpleasant version - you can’t help people who won’t help themselves. I think about all you can do is not buy into her scaring herself. Don’t enable her, don’t give her unrealistic fears more weight than they deserve. Don’t make light of them (her anxiety feels very real to her), but don’t play them up, either. One of the hard things for people with anxiety to come to terms with is that you get something out of your excessive anxiety. Your friend gets something out of her anxiety. You don’t need to be the one to give it to her (maybe she gets attention, maybe she gets to have no responsibilities and not have to grow up, maybe she gets to feel sorry for herself, etc).
[QUOTE=Revenant ThresholdWhat trauma caused your PTSD?[/QUOTE]
Hi, sorry I took so long to respond. I just started a new job, my first REAL job, that is making me wonder where the hell my time goes at the end of every work day. Join the club, right?
The short answer to your question is: my mother.
The long answer, I will provide a list of various things that complicated matters:
- moving 13 times before I was 10
- my mother’s four marriages and assorted boyfriends
- my mother’s severe emotional and occasional physical abuse/her mental health issues and suicide attempts
- my two sexually abusive stepfathers
- my alcoholic biological father whose rights were terminated when I was 13
- running away from home at 17 and becoming an emancipated minor
- nobody believing me about the sexual abuse
- Mom staying married to the abuser years after I disclosed to her, and her even sort of admitting she’d known about it, but also sort of thinking I might be crazy, and trying to seize my legal right to make my own medical decisions, and pressuring me to forgive her husband.
So, I guess the most traumatic part of all of that would be the family not believing me, and the general loss of support I experienced, at age 17, when I found myself without much support from family or friends and with no financial support whatsoever. It was a hard time, and the aftermath lasted.
But all those other things, though they might not have been all that bad in and of themselves, seem to become this great big ball of confusion and pain when taken as a whole. So while my Mom really only slapped me around instead of breaking my bones, in the context of the rest of my childhood it was just one more piece of the trauma puzzle.
That’s why what I have is called ‘‘complex’’ PTSD. It doesn’t have a single source. It involves the classic flashbacks, nightmares, etc, but it also involves just a general difficulty in controlling my emotions, and affects my sense of self-worth and kind of my whole life paradigm.
That has changed a lot of course-- I’m not going to minimize it and say it wasn’t absolute hell, and sometimes when I write it down like this it sort of overwhelms me… but it’s also something I’ve come to terms with and accepted, not as the sum total of my identity, but as a part of it–the part that made me emotionally connected and caring for others, brave, strong, and tenacious. Og bless my past. I wouldn’t have achieved half as much in my life if I hadn’t had to learn to get through all that.
Anxiety disorder is what causes people to have completely irrational fears, isn’t it? I’m sure there is more to it than that, but that’s it in a nutshell, right?
How can you tell if someone’s irrational fears need professional help or if they just simply need to snap out of it? Where do you draw the line between someone who is scared of asking girls out and someone who is scared of using cotton swabs?
Bingo. This happens to me too often. I am on Lexapro. I diagnosed myself, but my doctor is used to me doing so (I’m usually correct). Life is much better on Lexapro, except for sex. I was on Prozac, years ago; that had a worse impact on my sex life than Lexapro.
I think I’ve always had an anxiety disorder. As a child, I was too shy to speak, and if I had to-I cried. I greatly feared most of ordinary living: rollercoasters, dogs (not helped by my mother refusing to put down a vicious dog that was the famlily “pet”), strangers, TV images, potential humiliation or physical danger. I see some of this in my kids as well.
I don’t have panic attacks, but I do practice avoidance behavior. I find if I have not done something social in some time, I am extremely reluctant to do so-it’s like I have to stay in practice. This probably sounds positively Martian to some here. A party that others may see as just normal or fun is to me something to process–I am overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, interactions etc. Oh, you won’t see it (I do function well), but before I go, I will break a sweat (and sweat more while attending) and once I get home–the movie replays (and usually not in my favor). In person, I seem poised and polite, but it comes at a cost.
For me (and I know this is true of my kids), reassurance does nothing (nor does dimissiveness, as mentioned upthread). The anxious person is not reassured by you saying, “it’ll be OK”; “but X didn’t happen the last time we did this.” or “how do you know it’ll be like that? You’ve haven’t even tried it.” The latter puts the person on the defensive, the former gets to the essence of the disorder. The answer to the former (if you are an anxious person) is, “No it won’t-you can’t guarantee that” or “so? There’s always a first time.” or “I can’t take the chance that X might happen.” Mostly, these types of reassurances are met with stolid silence.
So what to do? I dunno. It depends on your relationship with the person, the circumstances you find yourself in, the importance of X etc. I know for me, if it’s a social thing, I need a bolthole. I need to drive myself, so I can leave if I feel the need-that sort of thing. Anxiety disorders involve control on lots of levels (among other things). Re the PTSD posted here, I can not help at all. I see that as having similar symptoms, but vastly different causes(even though they get lumped together). PTSD definitely has a negative impact on coping with anxiety disorders.
Anxiety, a normal human emotion, becomes disordered when it is negatively affecting your life and the way you’re living it. The cotton ball phobia is an interesting point; if your irrational fear is something that you never encounter, it doesn’t affect your life much. If your irrational fear is that you will kill someone while driving and you stop driving because of it, you probably need to work that out. The motto of our self-help group is “Feel the Fear, and Do It Anyway.” 
The fear doesn’t necessarily have to be irrational (though some most definitely are), but the thoughts do. For example, someone who is afraid of asking girls out might be somewhat justified in his concern over being rejected. But someone with an anxiety disorder would transform that thought into a stream of irrational thought.
So a person without the disorder might think, ‘‘God, that woman’s hot. I want to ask her out, but it would be kind of awkward if she said ‘‘no.’’ I don’t really want to deal with that discomfort.’’
A person WITH an anxiety disorder might think:
"I’m terrified of being rejected. That would be the worst thing ever. If I asked her out, she would definitely reject me. Everyone would laugh at me and she would think there was something wrong with me. I really shouldn’t even bother–I’m not attractive enough to ever get a date anyways. Nobody wants to date me.’’
You have all kind of irrationality right there-- overgeneralizing, jumping to conclusions, mind-reading, fortune-telling, mental filter, etc. (those are all CBT terms.)